STOCKS NEWS EUROPE-Debutants Direct Line, O2 to join STOXX 600

Late 2012 listings O2 and Direct Line are expected to
secure places in the STOXX Europe 600 benchmark in a reshuffle this
quarter, fuelling demand for shares in the British insurer and German-listed
telecoms group from index trackers.

With market capitalisations of $8.9 billion and $5.2 billion, respectively,
the two companies comfortably rank among the 550 largest stocks in Europe,
qualifying for automatic admission into the STOXX Europe 600, StarMine data
shows.

Telecoms operators OTE Hellenic Telecoms and TalkTalk, as
well as lender Banco Comercial Portugues (BCP) are also set to join the
index this quarter.

These three stocks, which have seen their share prices rise between 15
percent and nearly 80 percent over the last three months, feature in a list of
Europe's 750 largest shares by market cap.

The new members are poised to replace struggling Spanish lender Bankia
, Swiss technology group Logitech, gold miner Petropavlovsk
and Dutch mail operator PostNL, which have all fallen below
the 750th position required to maintain STOXX Europe 600 status.

British insurance broker Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT) is also
earmarked for demotion after failing to meet the index's minimum average daily
liquidity requirement of 1 million euros, according to analysts at a large
European investment bank.

The 550 stocks with the biggest market capitalisation automatically qualify
for inclusion at the quarterly review whether they are existing members of the
index or not. For the remaining 50 places, if a current member ranks between 551
and 750, it stays in, but if not, the largest stock not currently in the index
takes its place.

The analysts at the leading investment bank estimate the reshuffle could
fuel demand for between 2 and 2.6 million shares each for Direct Line, TalkTalk,
OTE and O2, and for 128 million shares in Banco Comercial from investors who
track indexes, such as buyers of some Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs).

Demotion would cause 9.3 million shares in Bankia, 4 million shares in
PostNL and between 700,000 and 900,000 shares each in Logitech, JLT and
Petropavlosk to be sold, they add.

The reshuffle, based on data to the end of January, will be announced on
Feb. 26 and will be implemented on March 15.

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